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Police reports, Nov 2 2009

In a serious collapse of policing-authority, two senior Afrikaner cops were arrested by junior police-reservists for insisting on a thorough accident-scene investigation…

Police Supt. Heila Joubert and husband Inspector Braam Joubert were arrested in Krugersdorp and dumped in a police cell by junior police-reservists for ‘interfering in an accident scene’. This serious breach of authority was the result of the senior Afrikaans police officers insisting that their junior reservist-colleagues carry out a proper accicent-scene investigation. Such incidents are symbolic of the increasingly serious breakdown of authority inside the SA Police Services …

An Afrikaner couple – SAPS superintendent Heila Joubert and husband Inspector Braam Joubert - were thrown in a police cell in Krugersdorp for insisting that their junior police-reservist colleagues carry out a better investigation of an accident scene in which a pedestrian was seriously injured on Tuesday.

Heila Joubert, 36, works at the Kagiso police station at the East Rand. She then asked her husband inspector Braam Joubert, 36, of the Krugersdorp Task Force, to go and help her sister sort out the details around the accident scene.

Inspector Joubert said when he arrived at the accident scene however, he had found only oe police reservist there, a sergeant. He identified himself and offered his assistance. However a row erupted when Joubert insisted that proper measurements and sketches be made of the crime-scene, while the reservist was at that stage, already packing away his paper-work, he told the newspaper. Another reservist then showed up – another sergeant – who then immediately passed legal judgment on the driver, saying: ‘look at the brake-marks, she was speeding..’.

Inspector Joubert said he pointed out however that such decisions are made by law-courts, not by police officers.

‘F… off my scene. I’m in charge…’ ‘Bring the shock-machine…’

The second sergeant shoved the police inspector and told him: “F*** off from my scene! I’m in charge!” The first reservist tried to intervene. Insp. Joubert then called his wife asking her to send the unit commander ‘because his members don’t know their jobs’. A police vehicle then showed up with two more reservists, accompanied by a permanent-force police inspector. This inspector however wasn’t very happy either, shouting: “ “Bring the ‘shock’-machine’, pommeling Joubert in his ribs and then dumping the Afrikaner police officer into a police van.

His wife superintendent Heila Joubert showed up at this point and took photographs on her cellphone, showing her husband being arrested. The inspector told her that her husband was ‘being arrested for reckless driving.’ Superintendent Joubert repliedthat he was ‘ being an idiot, because it hadn’t been her husband who had driven the accident-car, it had been her sister.’

The arresting officer then said he would refuse to open a police docket and also refused to take any witness statements at the scene, Superintendent Joubert said.

At this stage, a senior-superintendent showed up and released inspector Joubert from the van and a struggle then ensued in which another junior reservist againdumped Braam Joubert back into the van again and drove off with him to the Krugersdorp police station, with Heila following in her car.

While enroute to the Krugersdorp police station to visit her husband in the cells, superintendent Heila Joubert also was waylaid by a junior police reservist and arrested. Both ended up in the Krugersdorp police cells. The couple said they were told they were ‘going to be charged with intervening in a crime scene, crimen injuria and slander.’

Meanwhile throughout this unsavoury fracas, all these turf-warring police officers seemed to have forgotten the most important reason for their existence: namely to protect the public: no mention has been made in this article whether any enquiries were made at the hospital about the condition of the accident victim.

Picture: Floral tributes were placed at the gate of the Klipeiland butchery on the R25-highway outside Bronkhorstspruit where manager Pieter Woest, 44, was gunned down by a ten-member youth gang. Alet Pretorius, Beeld.

Fanie van Rooyen reports in Beeld newspaper that Mrs Anita Woest, 50, wife of murdered Bronkhorstspruit butcher Pieter Woest, was weeping and screaming loudly: “Please Lord, do not take him away. I cannot live without him’ just after her husband was gunned down in broad daylight

The couple were working at the butchery when a worker warned them that the building next door was being robbed. Mr Woest grabbed his handgun and ran out – but ran straight into one of the armed gang-members. A gun-fight ensured in which one attacker was struck twice – but Mr Woest then was shot down by another gangster with several shots in the back.

Cashier Tokkie Human, 53, who also was held up at gunpoint by the gang, said when she reached Mr Woest, “blood was coming out of his mouth and nose and he was dead on the scene’.

Arrived in a taxi - Police captain Sipho Zulu said the attackers arrived at around 12:30 in a cream-coloured Toyota Quantum minibus-taxi vehicle. Butchery owner Mrs Suzette Olivier said she was working with the cashier behind the counter when the gang burst in, guns at the ready.

“I was serving a customer when a man with a black jacket stormed in, pushing our security guard to the floor and firing one shot into the ground next to him’, she said. The women were forced at gunpoint to open the cash-registers by men constantly screaming that they would be killed, she said.

SA losing the fight against corruption

2009/11/02 René Vollgraaff reports that ‘South Africa definitely is not winning the fight against corruption’, quoting advocate Mokotedi Mpshe, acting head of the national prosecuting authority, speaking on Friday at an anti-corruption forum of the Business Unity South Africa (BUSA) organisation.

Mpshe is not exactly a shining example of fighting corruption: earlier this year he was in the news with claims that key-elements of his summary drawn up in president Jacob Zuma ‘s corruption-trial was plagiarised from a HongKong court decision.

This week Mpshe said: “we have all the processes and instruments, but our culture of non-compliance and to just accept everything as the norm, makes the battle against corruption very difficult.

The term "genocide" was coined by legal scholar Raphael Lemkin in 1943, writing:

'Generally speaking, genocide does not necessarily mean the immediate destruction of a nation, except when accomplished by mass killings of all members of a nation. It is intended rather to signify a coordinated plan of different actionsaiming at the destruction of essential foundations of the life of national groups, with the aim of annihilating the groups themselves.

The objectives of such a plan would be the disintegration of the political and social institutions, of culture, language, national feelings, religion, and the economic existence of national groups, and the destruction of personal security, liberty, health, dignity and lives of the members of such groups... '